Appendix to the Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-West Passage

Polar explorer John Ross (17771856) sailed with William Edward Parry in 1818 to seek a North-West Passage from Baffin Bay. The attempt was unsuccessful and Ross was widely blamed for its failure. In 1829 he set out on a privately funded expedition on the steamship Victory accompanied by his nephew James Clark Ross to try again returning to England in late 1833. Using survival techniques learnt from the Inuit he befriended Ross kept his crew healthy through four icebound winters. While the voyage once again failed to find a North-West Passage it surveyed the Boothia Peninsula and a large part of King William Land. It was also valuable for its scientific findings with J. C. Ross discovering the magnetic pole. Ross published this two-volume work in 1835. Volume 2 contains scientific reports ethnological information on the Inuit an Eskimo vocabulary and comments on natural history.